


Moribund - The Death of David Rizzio

by virginandmartyr



Category: Historical RPF, Mary Queen of Scots (2013), Mary Queen of Scots (2018), Reign (TV)
Genre: Gen, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22376428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virginandmartyr/pseuds/virginandmartyr
Summary: An assassination - a massacre - painted in full.
Kudos: 3





	Moribund - The Death of David Rizzio

Dear reader, I ask you, in earnest, to envisage this:

Mary Stuart. Queen of Scotland and the Isles. Our sovereigns, dear reader, are not as infallible as they would have us believe. The events unravelling before us prove that she is vulnerable to the follies of man. To their suspicions, their jealousies. Hitherto, Scotland has not been shackled to a queen regnant since the days of Margaret, Maid of Norway. The lairds are unaccustomed to playing supplicant to the whims of a woman. Such festering resentment cannot be lanced and cauterised at leisure. Mary Stuart knew this. She yielded to their demands, at first - their encroachments. She could play the unctuous wife well. A mother to her country.

Alas, the charade cannot last forever. They know her for what she truly is. As she sinks to her - cushioned by her ample skirts - she knows. As blade after blade plunges into Rizzio's gullet. She should have been more cautious. The old adage is embroidered into the alcoves of her heart: "There is no smoke without fire". Sometimes it pays to listen.

Rizzio's hirsute chest is bared. An offering.

_In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen._

\----

Darnley, her wretched husband, turns his head resolutely away. He blinds himself to the butchering. Behold, as his stomach and lips churn; a litany for his sins. This man, nay this boy, who once recoiled from any glimpse at a man's mortality, is now the harbinger of chaos. Never inured against death or loss, he had always faced his life with perpetual elation and eagerness. To consume and damn the consequences.

Watch, reader, as he wrenches at his wife's arms, at her waist. Nails cutting deep with such ferocity it is enough to draw blood. The boy is transfixed; his eyes roving over the Flemish tapestries that adorn the walls. The minutiae of it all: the prancing animals, the illicit lovers, the benign pastoral life. A microcosm captured and mounted. He cannot focus. There is far too much blood. Too much.


End file.
